Crochet Necklace with button and sequens jewel effect

I love this making these, so much so that this is the latest present I make for my girly friends to go with their birthday cards.

I like to use pearlised cotton to crochet with and adding a few sequins over the button stitching to add a little bit of sparkle or you can just add a pretty button you have going spare in your button jar.

The pattern was from Mollie Makes magazine issue 35 and they've made a great youtube tutorial to show you how:

Crafty Present Making

For Christmas 2013 I made as many presents for my friends and families as I could.

Scarves for the boys (Rowan cashsoft)
 

 

 

 

I started in November and the majority of presents were crocheted.  Not satisfied with the pressure of making so many presents, I also made snowflake Christmas decorations which were placed inside all the Christmas cards I sent.

An oven glove for mum (Rowan handknit cotton, heatproof cloth, lining)

At the start I was thinking of references to homemade Christmas jumpers and jokes about homemade knitting - not nice ones!  But as I pressed on with the gifts I took comfort in the fact that I had selected the most luxurious yarns for my gifts and if you were to purchase the same item from a store, based on the quality of materials you would probably be looking at between £20 - £50 per item.  Not only that, but when you make a gift for someone, you think of that person when you make the gift.

Dad's woolly hat (Rowan cashsoft)

One friend said that it was easier than shopping in a store, and whilst ishopping and dealing with crowds of people, traffic, busy shops, etc is stressful and it is nicer to stay home, it does take roughly a week per gift (I made all the gifts on evenings after work or during the weekend) I don't think you can compare the two scenarios.

Woolly hat for hubby (Rowan Cashsoft)

Pin cushions for my sewing bee friends (Rowan handknit cotton)

The cherry on the cake for me was when people opened the gifts.  In the words of my step brother "... what you made this scarf? I thought you bought it from a shop!  You mean you made all this with wool and a crochet hook?" Mum didn't want to use her present as an oven glove as it was too pretty so I think she's intending to use it as a tea cosy instead.  Other friends and family were less verbal but just as complimentary (and I'm including the moment when they opened the presents, the expression on their face when they saw what it was which could be positive or negative!)  I didn't tell anyone that I'd made the presents until they opened them and the label from the ball of yarn fell out with the washing instructions.

Snowflake gifts for Christmas Cards (DMC pearl cotton)

This is definitely something I will do next year, but I will start earlier as it was a bit stressful with the time pressure.  I was still finishing off the last present on Christmas eve and by the Christmas holidays I was exhausted from working by day and making presents by night for over 6 weeks.  My friends from my sewing bee also made presents and we've all vowed to start thinking about making presents in September.  I love creating and making things and am happiest crocheting away in the corner - I wouldn't have swapped it!

And after all that I'm proud to admit I only bought 3 presents, all the rest were homemade, which is really satisfying.

What presents did you make for Christmas?   

Crochet Snowflake Christmas Decorations

Just learnt to make these snowflakes from a pattern in Mollie Makes Magazine.  They are supposed to be the decoration for some gloves but I think they make great decorations for the Christmas Tree or maybe a snowflake garland.

 

 It's a treble round, and the icicle parts are 3 x chains together.  I modified the pattern to make the chain in the middle to be 6 stitch chain in between two 4 stitch chains. 

Crochet Crazy and crochet cushion covers

Craig's cushion: One side red in trebble, other side squares

 I've gone a bit crochet crazy lately.  Think it's the dark evenings that are setting it off.


To start with I've been making a crochet cushion cover for my friend Craig.  One side was fine - I managed to get to the desired 14.5" but when I got to the other side I ran out of wool.


I've just learnt to do single colour crochet squares as I'd love to have a patchwork blanket.  Craig saw these and thought they'd really work as a side to his cushion cover.


He was right, I threaded them together and it really worked.


The only hitch is I've been stitching the sides together with a double crochet stitch in navy blue and it looks lovely and neat one side, but the back side of the stitches not so neat.




I had the epiphany in a dream - yes maybe I am doing a bit too much crochet right now!


Why not edge both sides in blue double crochet stitch and then stitch the sides together - that way the good side of the double crochet will be seen on all sides.




And here it is, edged on both sides with a double crochet stitch.



I then stitched the sides together with a tapestry needle.


But just as I'd finished stitching the sides together I noticed that I'd stitched the red side back to front. Craig was visiting that evening and he actually preferred to have the underside of the squares showing, so I just turned it inside out and let Craig choose his buttons for the fastening at the bottom.


Finally, I made three crochet chains to fasten the buttons with and there you have it, the finished piece of work.



It was really nice to present it to Craig.  It's been a good few months work in the evenings after work and it is the largest crochet project I have worked on so far.


It's crazy to think I only taught myself to crochet with the help of You Tube 10 months ago.

My first dress - my wedding dress and the start of a sewing club

This summer marked the conclusion of my first dress pattern dress - my wedding dress.

The dress pattern

It was the most wonderful feeling walking around in a beautiful 50s dress that I'd made myself and for the fraction of the price of a typical wedding dress.

Christmas 2011 mum bought me a sewing machine.  To make the most of my new machine, I new I needed to start with a project.  At that time no other friends had sewing machines so I needed a simple project that I could do by myself.  A project with straight lines seemed to be the answer and so cushions were my first creations cushions-for-little-ones.  Following on from those first few cushions a few months later we moved to our new home and there were no curtains and so I made curtains for a 3 metre wide window by 2 metres length with lining.  Not an easy second project but mum gave me instructions - I would like to add that 100% machine work was done by me!  In the autumn I started a sewing class where the project was a tote bag.  I am still very proud of that tote bag with appliqué.  And then... I was at the point where I wanted to make my clothes.

You see I'm an odd shape, like so many of us are, who really fits into a single size that the shops want to fit us into anyway?  For me I have very narrow shoulders, a narrow back, nipped in waist and large-ish hips.  I'm an hour glass.  So my back and shoulders are probably about an 8, my waist a 10 and my hips a 12.  Historically this wouldn't be a problem and the hourglass shape certainly has a leaning towards those classic outfits of the 50s.  Thus explaining my love of vintage 40s and 50s dress styles!

Front of the toile

Sewing a pattern means you can custom make to fit you perfectly.  In fact, its the only way to guarantee something fits you properly unless you can afford to have all your clothes made by a professional dress maker.

Back of the toile

November 2012 I proposed to Matt. This was also around the time  when I got it in my head I wanted to learn to make clothes.  Initially I thought it would be so lovely to make my wedding dress but I hadn't followed a dress pattern before so couldn't imagine having the confidence to do something like that for my first project.  I was a complete rooky.  Then my matron of honour, Dawn suggested that she and another of my work colleagues (the lovely Janet) could help me.  The idea was born!

We started work on the dress in February - the wedding date was 20th July.  No pressure!

Sewing Team

Janet hosted our sewing soirees in her sewing room and fed us baked potatoes for sustenance.  We met every Friday after work.

Janet and Dawn taught me to cut the pattern correctly along the grain, to mark up the fabric and I made a toile with their tutoring.  A toile is a practice dress usually made out of calico or a cheap fabric to help with the fitting.  By late April I completed the toile and then Janet and Dawn checked the fitting.  This involved lots of pins - some of which got me!  Maybe it was on purpose!!

We used the toile to redo the pattern.  Janet was amazing at this.  I think she had major head aches with all the maths!  She amended the original pattern so it fitted me perfectly.  You have to decide where the stitch line should be, but once you are happy you need to add 1.5cm or 5/8" for seam allowance.  Dawn made these new pattern pieces with greaseproof paper sellotaped together (sellotape doesn't stick to it very well) but this served the purpose wonderfully.

I then got to work on the lining and then the outer dress material.  The lining was from the Birmingham Rag Market and the outer dress material was in duchess satin from Barry's Fabric.

Meanwhile Dawn and Janet worked on the petticoat together.  This was made with a soft satin lining, very stiff netting with ribbon trim at the base.  The hem measured 8 metres all the way around so there was a lot of fabric.  It looked like a very challenging piece to make.

The pressure to complete the dress in the last month before the wedding was tremendous.  At the time I was also organising the wedding single handed in the last month because Matt was working in Germany.  I didn't have much warning of this and the church hadn't been paid for, venue menus hadn't been agreed, etc.  There was a lot of running around as well as full weekends of dress making.

It was a really challenging thing to do but the sense of achievement to wear my own dress was huge.  I would have had to pay a great deal of money to get a dress that fitted me so perfectly and instead I paid £100 in materials and the other big cost was our time and energies.

Janet and Dawn didn't just teach me how to follow a dress pattern, they were there to bounce ideas off and ears to my tales of the stresses and strains of planning a wedding.  They gave me a lot - not just time, Janet's husband Graham making us cups of coffee, baked potatoes, knowledge but tremendous support in so many ways.

If you are considering making a dress and organising a wedding all in 6 months, consider it carefully.  It was intensive and very tiring.   You need some dress making friends to work with too ;)

After we'd spent six months together working on the dress, we didn't want to stop sewing together so we are continuing to meet.  We meet on Fridays in Janet's sewing room.  We've got a new member of the sewing team too, Cynthia.  We're all working on our own projects now. Dawn's making a variety of clothes for her niece, Cynthia's making a top for her grand daughter, Janet's making a coat and me?  Well I'm making my next dress.  A 1940s tea dress - I want to put all that new knowledge to good use and also expand my wardrobe with another classic!

A late present

My boyfriend's birthday was a few weeks ago.  I was trying to crochet him a woolly hat.

 I am a real beginner with crochet.  In the first week of January I decided to teach myself crochet from a book I bought with the Christmas money my stepfather gave me.  The first week was really tough.  The book was showing pictures of how you should have your hands when crocheting - well quite frankly mine did not want to crochet like that at all.  After a few days of struggling I decided to have a look at You Tube videos of people crocheting in action.  I decided not to worry about my hands but the stitches instead and then I was away with crochet.

I made a few things in my first month a mini storage box, a flower, a twisty scarf and I decided to make my boyfriend's present out of crochet.  I had no idea what to make and he said he would love a woolly hat with a pompom on the top.

Please bear in mind this was 3 days before his birthday and ordinarily this would be enough time to browse in a shop and purchase something appropriate.  But this was my first project making something as a present for my boyfriend - it had to be good!

This was also the first real project based on a round and this really challenged me.  There were a few duff starts before I was confident that what I was working would resemble what I wanted it to be. Needless to say 15 days late, I'm still working on his woolly hat but its almost finished and then I can make the pompom for the top. But as a good friend said - who gets a bespoke woolly hat these days?

Not wanting him to be without on his birthday, he had a handmade card and I baked him a chocolate cake with happy birthday candles so he was chuffed with that.

His real present (the woolly hat) is nearly finished except for the pompom - lets hope I'm not too much of a perfectionist with that bit!  Poor Matt...

Heart-tastic